Critical care hospital patients often receive medically necessary interventions such as endotracheal tubes, intravenous (IV) lines, nasogastric tubes, and urinary catheters. Medically unsupervised removal of a device, such as the intentional or unintentional removal of a tube or line by a patient, can cause life-threatening situations. The standard of care includes tying cloth restraints around a patient's wrists and securing the restraints to the patient's bed frame with cloth strands short enough to prevent the patient's hands from reaching and moving or removing the devices. The standard of care also includes sedating the patient.
Restraint can be physically uncomfortable for the patient and emotionally disturbing to the patient's family and friends. Restraint also increases the risk of critical illness polyneuropathy (CIP), also known as critical care weakness (CCW). Up to 30% of critical care patients develop CIP, which is characterized by profound muscle weakness and neurological dysfunction. CIP can extend a patient's hospital stay for days or even weeks and worsen a patient's prognosis for improvement.
Pediatric, cognitively impaired, and other non-critical patients may intentionally or unintentionally move or remove medical interventions such as wound dressings, IV lines, and nasogastric tubes.
Critical care patients may benefit from muscle strengthening exercise to improve muscle tone or strength or help prevent muscle atrophy. Some patients have arterial IV lines in or near the wrist and may benefit from maintaining the wrist in a cocked position and securing the lines out of the way of the hand.
The information included in this Background section of the specification, including any references cited herein and any description or discussion thereof, is included for technical reference purposes only and is not to be regarded as subject matter by which the scope of the invention as defined in the claims is to be limited.